BlogStories of Hope: Investments for a Clean Energy Economy in Appalachia

2024: A Year in Review at ReImagine Appalachia

By December 23, 2024No Comments

December 23, 2024

In response to an abundance of federal funding and new economic initiatives, our coalition members, and the Ohio River Valley region as a whole, have done an incredible job innovating and adapting to take advantage of historic opportunities from the federal climate infrastructure package. Together with our partners, our coalition laid a strong foundation for long-term transformative growth in 2024.

Looking forward, many questions remain as to how the shifting political landscape will impact our momentum. We are ready to roll up our sleeves and charge ahead while working together with our brilliant and equally dedicated partners. We want to continue telling a story of our hopes for the region, foster the growth that is still needed, diversify our economy and energy supply, and defend the ambitious federal support that has shown what’s possible when we invest in our local communities. All while creating good union jobs in the region and pathways out of poverty for disadvantaged workers. 

At ReImagine Appalachia, we style our summits, programs, and policy work to be as inclusive as possible with the goal of creating new connections, a shared vision, a more unified voice and collective action required for building towards the bright future our region deserves. This sustainable future requires collaborative efforts of policy experts, scientists, community-based groups, labor partners, racial justice and faith leaders, local electeds, environmental partners and more mapping out the path forward and the pitfalls we can better avoid together.

Let’s review some of 2024’s initiatives that did just that:

We facilitated the Make it in Appalachia Listening Series:

When we started gathering feedback from communities back in 2020 to create our Blueprint, what they kept stressing was a need to revitalize and modernize manufacturing in the region. A key component of this work is knowing what types of manufacturing will fit with Appalachia. This year, we worked with partners region-wide and with our talented researchers to paint a much fuller picture of the manufacturing landscape. We uncovered what to prioritize to turn our region’s liabilities into assets and make the region a model of modern, sustainable manufacturing. Over the course of two months, ReImagine Appalachia hosted four listening sessions on leveraging the region’s existing manufacturing strengths to create new opportunities for the future. We enlisted an array of amazing speakers to spark conversations around mapping Appalachia’s manufacturing sectors, supporting the growing industrial hemp sector, reducing single-use plastic waste with sustainable bioplastics, and organizing green building supply chains. Participant-informed discussions are crucial to our research. We look forward to releasing more of our findings in the new year! 

We produced the Redeveloping Shuttered Coal Plants Handbook

Once the primary source of good-paying jobs in the region, the coal industry has diminished significantly. This has left communities with slashed economic prospects and quiet facilities. We developed The Redeveloping Shuttered Coal Plants Handbook to help reverse the devastating impacts of plant closures. The handbook walks through how to repurpose abandoned infrastructure to build more sustainable industries and create jobs. It includes guidance for how to:

  • 🛠 Leverage on-site assets.
  • 👂Understand and address your community’s unique needs.
  • 💪Tackle barriers to redevelopment.

We released the Appalachian Flood Policy Platform

Together with dozens of partners, ReImagine Appalachia helped develop an exhaustive policy proposal document grounded on a four-pronged approach to tackle the worst impacts of flooding in the region and lift up new solutions for recovery after floods. The central pillars of this The Appalachian Flood Policy Platform are as follows:

  • ⛑ Pillar I: Increase local and state capacity to respond and recover
  • 🏚 Pillar II: Relieve the recovery and mitigation burden for low-income households 
  • 📍Pillar III: Improve flood mapping and data inputs
  • 🌳Pillar IV: Invest in Nature-Based Hazard Mitigation

We hosted the ReImagine Your Community Showcase

We facilitated a cohort of eight leaders from seven different communities across Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania who committed more than ten months to trainings and project development. Participants used our ReImagine Your Community Sustainable Economy Toolkit to develop concepts that would accelerate sustainable economic growth in their communities. The 2024 ReImagine Your Community Showcase offered a platform for groundbreaking solutions to tackle challenges our region faces and we were thrilled and inspired by the results.

We created the Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs) Resource Page and the CBA Regional Network

In 2024, we built upon our past work promoting community benefit agreements (assurances that communities will benefit from incoming funding or projects). In 2021, we published a paper titled “Maximing Value: Ensuring Community Benefits” and in 2023 hosted a summit to lift up CBAs and labor standards. Our goal was to ensure that inbound community projects built local wealth and prosperity while avoiding historic patterns of exploitation that have harmed so many parts of Appalachia. With the historic influx of funding – and projects – that came from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), the need for education and capacity building around these policies increased dramatically. This year, Reimagine Appalachia launched a monthly networking call, a website of compiled resources, and hosted a listening session on community benefit priorities to promote diverse local hiring opportunities.

We launched the Grant of the Month Club

Nearly all of our hundreds of partners felt the pressure to take full advantage of the of once-in-a-generation influx of federal funding to underinvested places. We supported many efforts to increase access to these resources, including a monthly Grant of the Month Club, designed to create community and break down barriers to funding streams and technical assistance. You can view recordings and presentations in the “Grant of the Month” Section of our Events page here.

Arts & Culture Network Initiative

Identifying a need for coalition building in the creative sector, ReImagine developed the Arts & Culture Initiative in early 2024. It has rapidly expanded since. We began with a landscape analysis (research into the priorities and focus areas of arts and culture initiatives in the region) to learn about the experiences of other organizations on the ground. Once finished evaluating our findings, we convened with the 28 organizations we surveyed to present our data. In the process, we created a new space for communication and collaboration. This initial Arts & Culture convening thus grew into a monthly meeting and established a network of cultural practitioners, funders, and stakeholders. In addition to the monthly meetings with the network, we established a weekly Appalachian Artist Shoutout series on our social media channels to amplify artists from the region among our audiences and show our appreciation for their work. Lastly, this year we started giving the creative sector the attention it deserves with a series of arts & culture blogs. 

To top it all off…

We hope you’ll also join us for our 2025 January Strategy Summit where we’ll carve out our work plan for 2025.  Last year, we convened through panels and workshops to help guide and create our coalition’s 2024 priorities and work plan, with 15 sessions and over 300 attendees! But in the mean time, we’d love for you to take a look at the activities we got up to this year, and accomplishments we are proud of. Enjoy!

2024 in Pictures:

Conference on Global Transitions

We presented our coalition’s work to encourage climate infrastructure funding for communities facing energy transition at this in-person conference with social science and humanities scholars, regulators, practitioners, and students from around. It was a convening for initiatives focused on the complexity of transitioning form coal. See more here.

    Wellbeing Economy Alliance Event April 2024 in DC

    ReImagine Appalachia was invited to participate in this cohort of coalitions from across the country to talk about coalition-building – the challenges and successes.

      Regional Convening hosted by Heinz June 2024

      This event focused on Capitalizing on Historic Climate Investments – bringing together funders, community advocates, local government officials, and think tanks from across the region to work together to ensure federal investments in climate would come to Appalachia.

        Strengthening Partnerships abroad

        In August 2024, our director of Special Projects, Natalia Rudiak went to Wielkopolska, Poland. Hosted by Przemysław Piechocki, President of the Board of the Association of Social Cooperatives based in Poznań, she shared knowledge for how both regions could transition from mutually coal-centric pasts to more sustainable futures. Read here


          Central Appalachian Network Convening

          This year, ReImagine Appalachia started collaborating more with the Central Appalachian Network by attending various virtual sessions and the in-person convening in Huntington, WV where Director of Programs, Dana Kuhnline, presented on RA’s work on Community Benefit Agreements.

            Celebrating Appalachian Artists

            This year, ReImagine Appalachia started a collaboration series with regional artists headed by our Arts and Culture Associate, Blaise Reader.

              Co-op Cincy Tour March 2024

              During a site tour of Co-op Cincy, Rike Rothenstein visits Co-op member Sustainergy, a worker-owned residential solar installer and energy efficiency service provider.

                IWG Stakeholder Retreat July 2024

                The Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization hosted a stakeholder retreat with energy community leaders from across the nation to share  insights to influence the future direction of the Energy Communities IWG and America’s clean energy transition.

                  ReImagine Your Community Project

                  Natalia Rudiak participated in the sustainable economic development visioning process for the Philips Subdivision of Marietta Ohio. She worked with Annie Warmke, one of our eight “ReImagine Your Community” cohort champions to help develop projects in the neighborhood!

                    2024 by the Numbers:

                    Year-end social media follower count

                    Events & Meetings

                    We are so proud of all the grants, community benefits, and technical assistance programs shared with our communities this year through our virtual events! This includes:

                    9 Grant of the Month Club events

                    6 Community Benefits Check-Ins

                    4 Make it in Appalachia Listening Sessions

                    2 Summits

                    Our 4th Annual Strategy Summit celebrated victories and visualized a future that would benefit our workers, communities, and the environment. This was an event that one attendee from Penn Tap praised as “…taking coalition building to a whole new level…”

                    Our Second Annual Shuttered Coal Plant Summit united experts from across sectors to discuss viable means of repurposing closed plants and building sustainable industries. Here we showcased our Redevelopment Handbook, which provides instructions for how to use existing coal facilities to build sustainable manufacturing plants and eco-industrial parks that better serve communities.

                    As of 2024, the story of our coalition is now a book! “ReImagine Appalachia, Healing the Land and Empowering the People” is available for educators and students to learn about how we are moving our region forward as a leader in economic diversification and policies that benefit communities, workers, and the environment. Are you an educator or student? Then check out our full recorded event!

                    ReImagine hosts bi-weekly calls (Tuesdays at noon EST) to share policy updates and resources with our coalition members. It also provides opportunities to network and meet community members!

                    These proved especially helpful to our coalition in late 2024 for keeping our stakeholders up to speed on the likely impacts of recent political transitions on funding and regulation.
                    Sign up to check in with us in the coming year here!

                    No flies on the ReImagine team. In 2024, members of our coalition  attended, participated in, and helped to promote 70+ in-person events!

                    Through summits, music festivals, fundraisers, forums, and workshops we engaged with, learned from, and assisted our partners and community members.

                    Since we specialize in visualizing a bright, sustainable future for the region, our presentations are central to our work.

                    This year we presented our mission and initiatives to 17+ partner organizations and at three different conferences.

                    We showcased viable alternatives to standard concrete and single-use plastics down to molecular compounds. We gave overviews of our flooding platform as well, broadening awareness for flood safety in our region.

                    Reports/Toolkits:

                    This year, ReImagine Appalachia, the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center, and the National Wildlife Federation collaborated on a sweeping policy proposal designed to strengthen our region’s resilience to flooding. In May 2024, dozens of partners signed onto an Appalachia Flood Policy Platform, which outlined flooding issues specific to the Appalachian region. This included nature-based solutions as well as infrastructure fortification.

                    You can check out our full platform here.

                    The Redevelopment Handbook – We publicly released this resource for the first time at our Second Annual Shuttered Coal Plants Summit before hundreds of attendees. We took special care to demonstrate how to repurpose retired coal plant site assets in a way that provides new opportunities for communities and creates skilled workforces.


                    The Community Benefits Page – This bank of resources outlines how to develop community benefits plans and incorporate them into your projects!

                    This year, the ReImagine team produced four new whitepapers to help propel a cleaner and more resourceful economy. These papers provide in-depth research on how to repurpose the otherwise harmful byproducts of coal mines, develop restoration workforces, and build cooperatives in the new energy economy.

                    See our 2024 whitepapers here!

                    Communications:

                    We use press statements to voice our region’s needs and publicly respond to national developments. Our biweekly coalition meetings and community conversation calls put us in direct contact with regional stakeholders. This strengthens our advocacy work.

                    We are sincere about ensuring that Appalachia has a voice on the national stage.

                    Click here to read our press statements

                    Largely spurred on by our work in coal community revitalization and flood mitigation, our coalition made some serious waves in the media this year!

                    ReImagine was part of the conversation in The New York Times, The World Economic Forum, and The Energy News Network among multiple local NPR stations.

                    See our full list of media hits here!

                    The ReImagine Blog is rapidly becoming a go-to resource on Appalachian industry updates, folk arts and culture, funding resources and tax credits, and more!


                    But beyond that, we are thrilled that our blog has become a source of inspiration to thousands. This year, one of the top most visited pages of our website was the “Stories of Hope” category page – which gets thousands of visitors on a weekly basis!

                    Now at 5,169 Subscribers, We added almost 2,000 new subscribers to our email lists in 2024. This has dramatically increased our capacity to reach people with crucial funding opportunities, community benefits, toolkits, and guides.

                    Stay informed with our newsletter here!

                    Our coalition is an ecosystem. Our various work plan priorities interact and mutually benefit each other in interesting ways. We engage with manufacturers, policy buffs, spokespeople of the arts, labor groups, and other parties to amplify our advocacy for the region’s most pressing issues.

                    Networks we support:
                    • Ad Hoc
                    • CBA
                    • Community conversations
                    • Federal Policy Team
                    • Manufacturing Team
                    • AML Labor Group
                    • Arts and Culture
                    • ReImagine Your Community
                    • Flooding Network
                    • Shuttered Coal Plant Working Group

                    It’s been an exciting year and we’re ready to roll up our sleeves and continue our work in the next!

                    If you would like to continue to support our work, you can make a donation here. Any amount helps!